Hummingbird House: Design for Everyone

Leslie Jackson: What I like about Suzanne’s and your home is that it looks like a normal house that real people would live in.
Larry Weingarten: I really was designing all the time for something that would not scare real people off… I get to be a water heater nerd, an energy nerd, or whatever they call them, but I wanted to design something in which there would be nothing that a real person could look at that would be an excuse to turn it down.
LJ: Including “I can’t afford this.”
LW: Including that. I wound up building it for about $100 a square foot, instead of $250.
LJ: Most people in California pay $250 per square foot and much more, whether it’s conventional or not. Did you know coming into the design process that this is what you wanted to do, or did it work out that you wanted an everyman’s house?
LW: I’m not sure if this is the right answer. I knew what I wanted to do; I knew I had a lot of ideas. I could only experiment on myself. If they worked, I hoped ...